How to make starting database?!

[stoopid]

Good Day, mates,

Lets say i'm trieing to open online dating service. Everythings has been done and now its time to put my site on the web... There is one thing that bothers me, although, thats how to make a starting database of profiles? I mean i think i need at least ~5000 or more profiles just to be attractive dating service to my customer...

Any sugestions? Couse this is real headache...

I think advertising could help, but when customer comes to that site and sees that theres no profiles, will he spend his time to register himself?

Thank you, for your time...

[luis]

Is your site free or paid?

If it is paid, go free for a time.

How to get people? Do not spend at the beginning in advertisement. Instead, do something else.

1. Go to chats and forums, be friendly, make friends. Passively, talk about your project, the dream about your new dating system. Nothing spammier. Charismatic people always tend to send their new friends to their personal websites.
2. When you make new friends for some quite a time, tell them about a promotion, that you claim that, per example, each new user that invites X number of friends (and that registers) per week, can participate in a weekly prize contest. The 5 users that makes more friends to register, will get the prizes. (I believe that, 5 prizes a week, will be less expensive than paying advertisement. BTW, people will cheat, and create madeup usernames and personalities. Do not care. If you got well done profiles, future users will think you got many users in your system).
3. Make a promotion about the users that a) do more posts in a forum, if you have one (should be valid posts, you should moderate the place), or give a prize to the person that chats more time online (one way to show that, is to be connected and chat with your new users. The users you like, the ones you give prizes).
4. Create other type of system alike.

After you gain a fix, steady public, you can consider going as a paid service site.

[stoopid]

Thank you very much Luis! Surely will use these gift giving system!

But now i'm in doubt -- should i start this dating service or should i try to do something more like roommates searching system. From technical view it's not so hard to change the script, but...

Before I was worried about attracting new profiles to my site, couse there are a lot of different dating services around the net, and now if i decide to make a roommate search system the competition will be smaller but there will be fewer people who would like to find new roommate instead of hot date, so creating starting database will be even more difficult than in dating service.

What's your opinion about roommate search? Or should i stick to dating service?

[Corey Bryant]

Well if you are programmer - why stop at dating? I mean - you probably already have a friend for casual friends, romantic evening, etc? Right? Add a few more options - like roommate, penpals, etc. Can't hurt, right?

Find them all in one place!

[stoopid]

Well thats something interesting... Thanks for idea

[Corey Bryant]

Originally Posted by stoopid

Well thats something interesting... Thanks for idea

Anytime - just give me 5%

[stoopid]

so that means that you owe me $4... :]

[Corey Bryant]

LOL - hm, take it out of my first check